


Something to hold on to

by magpie_03



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Epilepsy, Hurt Sam, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Tonic Clonic seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5596150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hello!</p><p>I just wanted to explore the idea of Sam having epilepsy and ending up in a hospital (as it sometimes happens with seizures). </p><p>Please note that I am not a doctor. This fic is based on my personal experience with Tonic-Clonic seizures and epilepsy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something to hold on to

Sam's muscles ache as if entire continents have moved and shifted inside him. There are voices and faces but it is all disconnected. Frozen. He's fallen out of time. Again. 

“Let’s get some fluids into you”, a cheery paramedic announces and connects an IV bag to a canula placed in his arm. Sam remembers neither canula nor paramedic in the first place. Panic seizes him. 

(...) 

Someone holds him down, the blue glove weights heavy on his chest.

“It’s okay, no need to panic..”

His head is full of flames, the red of his retina shining through, painting everything crimson red.

“Can you tell us your name?”

Faces are staring down at him, eyes unfamiliar and distant. The last thing Sam remembers is sitting inside a crowded diner trying to decide which salad to order while Dean had his usual fast food feast involving burgers and pie.

“What’s your name?”

The salad didn't even sound too bad. There are fluorescent lights above his head and a hard, unfamiliar surface underneath his body. Flickers of sunlight and trees are rushing by. Is this portable purgatory? Hell on wheels?

“No, he’s not with us yet…”

\-------

“How are you feeling?”

Sam stares at the doctor standing in front of him. _How am I feeling?_   His insides are represented on a monitor, wires coming and going out of his veins like busy interstates. The doctor repeatedly asks him if he remembers his name and is given answers in numbers and lines and beeps. Sam had EEGs before and they always reminded him of messed up children’s drawings. Lines spiking up and down. _Thinking is like moving underwater. That’s how I’m feeling._

“It’s a short circuit in your brain”, a neurologist tried to explain once, using air quotes and computer metaphors as if his brain and body came in a shiny case but the wiring inside was all wrong. It’s all in your head.

“Do you know where you are?”

Sam stares at the doctor standing next to him. A poreless face, stubble on the chin, dark circles under the eyes. The intern was just coming out a 24-hour shift and is now presented with _yet another_ emergency case on a fine June afternoon. An impressive collection of hospital-sponsored pens fit neatly inside the breast pocket of his coat.

“Can you tell me the time?”

The doctor chooses his second-best pen and clicks a few times. Sam feels the fluorescent lights murmur in his bones. There is a specific timeless quality to hospital light, the way it takes all complexion out of your face and fiercely defies circadian rhythm: days and nights are turned into long stretches of time solely connected by constant static noise, like making a long-distant phone call with a tin can on a string. The light is constantly flickering as if the entire room was rapidly blinking in confusion, or in horror.

“…”

To him, the hours after a seizure feels as if his brain had have a massive hiccup; he would still know voices and faces but unable to locate them, memorize or sequence them. They were too far away to be called a memory but it was all inside of him anyway. In a way, it was always inside, always too distant and too close at the same time.

“December?” He offers slowly.

The doctor raises an eyebrow and clicks his pens a few times more, matching the rhythm of the light above their heads.

“Okay, let’s see…”

Sam could feel the deafening drum of a headache setting in as if his brain wanted to remind him was it was still in charge, albeit not in best shape. He tries to bring a hand to his face to signal he needs pain medication but the neurologist doesn’t pay much attention to the way Sam’s body is moving beyond the pathologies commonly associated with seizures. He’s testing reflexes with a small hammer and hums in disapproval. Sam begins to wonder if anything in the hospital is real or if it’s all commodified; medication, time and compassion given out in disposable plastic cups. The headache is at full force now, splitting his head split open like old fruit.

“Did you wet yourself?”

The neurologist is scanning his jeans and Sam’s still too much in the haze of having come out of a seizure that he doesn’t notice the sudden look of embarrassment on the bystander’s faces.

“No but he drooled all over his face”, someone murmurs. The intern jots down a few details and disappears.

“So how are we doing?”

A nurse checks his numbers, practically clinging to the monitor and a few empty phrases. Sam’s hand jerks and he stares at it, wondering if this is his body’s way of saying: this is it. I’m done. I’ve gone this far and I can’t go any further. His feet are placed on the stretcher, still and disconnected from the tingling and buzzing inside his brain. It takes him a few minutes to realize that there is no shoe on his left foot.

“I lost my shoe…”

He mouthes these words carefully, as if a lost shoe was the universal answer to everything.

“My brother and I, we were hunting demons and I lost my shoe.”

_A 23-year old man presented to us with memory loss after a tonic-clonic seizure. Hunting demons. Sans sneaker._

“What’s that?”

The nurse fidgets; observing patients in postictal phase is no fun.

“My shoe…”

“No, he’s not fully oriented yet, said something about demons. Yes, I know there’s no bed available but we can’t kick him back on the streets now can we?”

An attending comes rushing in (with a bunch of interns tagging along), staring Sam like an old photograph he’s found in a dark corner of the attic.

“So, Mr., uh, Smith?” The doctor scratches his forehead and double-checks the chart in front of him. “We’re trying to organize a bed for you; until then we’ll give you something to relax and to sleep for a few hours, does that sound good?”

 

\------- 

“Your best guess? _What_?” Dean stares at the attending whose chart spares him the discomfort of having to look Sam in the eye and say _we don’t know_.

“Well, at this point we know what is causing the seizure but there are several treatment options, the EEG did reveal  epileptic spike foci and --"

And off he goes, long, complicated, polysyllabic words that are even worse when read out loud, like a foreign language only doctors are meant to converse in, in huffed whispers and worried looks. This particular MD has never had any formal training at how to talk to patients, even less a patient’s family, and he’s starting to feel tetchy at the thought of having to move out of his comfort zone, the rabbit hole of five minute appointments, charts and clinical diagnosis disguised as not knowing, disguised as _our best guess._

“Oh, and there’s something wrong with his blood. I don’t know, I’m not a haematologist, we need to refer him to a haematologist and see what they can do which on the other hand is a contraindication for the, uh, LP, so we cannot provide a full clinical diagnosis at this point—”

Dean still stares at man in front of him trying not to punch him in the face. Not only is he rather well-fed and big-bellied (too much beer in front of the television, Dean concludes, or too much gourmet caviar at fancy meeting neurologist meetings), his face is also of a dark red, like a lobster someone forgot in a steaming pot. Together with the thinning brownish hair and the blue jaw the man looked like the polar opposite of Dr. Sexy. And he's wearing tennis shoes.

“So, as I said, we need a full haematological report and then we can decide how to proceed. Until then I cannot safely recommend anticonvulsant therapy as the medications might trigger bleedings and —“

Dean nods absentmindedly. Words are flying through the air with no meaning. He's starting to feel sick. 

"Of course you can see your brother now--"

 ------- 

“Heya Sammy... ”

Dean wanders around restlessly, feeling invisible in a room full of machines. His younger brother looks so much more like a smaller brother now.

“So, this seizure you had…”

He continues to talk over he sound of machines beeping and blaring into nowhere.

“Say, how is it, this seizure stuff? Is it like a monster inside your head? Ugly, son-of-a-bitch demon?”

Sam grins in response and tries to lift his hand to his face and misses by half an inch.

“Hfnng..”

“What’s that?” Dean grabs a chair and sits down near the bedside, leaning forward. Sam murmurs, but instead of well-articulated Sam-sentences and a “I-told-you-so” look it’s gibberish. The knot in Dean’s stomach is growing. In medieval times people used to believe that seizures were caused by demons. How easy that would be.

“Excuse me, is this … normal? He’s, it’s like, he’s not really with me and…”

The nurse who comes in to check Sam’s vitals gives him a practised, well-meaning, “I’ve-seen-worse” smile. “Don’t worry, it’ll take a while for your brother to come back. He’s had a big seizure and his brain is trying to readjust…”

“Uh-uh…” The knot in Dean’s stomach gnarls. His brain is trying to readjust? _What?_

“Sammy, you even have a TV, look at that.” There is a small monitor attached to Sam’s bed and Dean switches it on, hoping for the weather channel or the news. Something to hold on to. The screen flickers.

“What the hell….”

Dean leans back in his chair. His eyes are fixed on the screen now, following the movements of a man wearing a beige trench coat, his black wings unfolding.

 


End file.
